The present disclosure relates to cleaning devices for removing remaining toner, and image forming apparatuses provided with the cleaning device.
Image forming apparatuses based on an electrophotographic method are widely known. The method includes five processes, namely, uniformly charging an uncharged photoconductor (charging process), irradiating the surface of the charged photoconductor with a laser beam according to a document to be copied thereby forming a latent image of the document on the surface of the photoconductor (exposure process), visualizing the latent image with toner (developing process), transferring the visualized toner image onto a recording medium such as a sheet placed on an intermediate transfer belt (transfer process), and fixing the transferred toner image onto the recording medium (fixing process).
Toner remains on the intermediate transfer belt on which the toner image has been transferred onto the recording medium, so that the remaining toner must be removed prior to the next image formation. Accordingly, for image forming apparatuses, various types of cleaning devices for removing the remaining toner have been suggested and been put into practice.
One example of the cleaning devices includes: a fur brush roller that cleans a surface of an intermediate transfer belt; a collecting roller that collects toner attached to the fur brush roller; a cleaning blade that abuts on a circumferential surface of the collecting roller and scrapes the toner collected by the collecting roller; and a toner storing container that temporally stores the toner scraped off by the cleaning blade.
The toner scraped off by the cleaning blade is moved to the toner storing container, and the toner moved to the toner storing container is conveyed by a conveyance screw to outside of the cleaning device. There is another example of the cleaning devices in which a seal member with flexibility is provided so as to make contact with a surface of the collecting roller, to thereby suppress the toner scraped off by the cleaning blade from flowing back to a fur brush roller side.